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Comment by dfc | Hacker News Reader

Do you honestly think non-technical people from outside the US are going to make a difference in this debate? I can't imagine a demographic with less influence over the situation.

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That "non-technical" person from "outside the US" has done a better job of explaining Edward Snowden to the masses than most news networks. His target demographic is Millennials, and he's very popular.

Yeah - This carries some weight.

OP said "We need every single non-technical person in the world to understand this clearly." You are talking about one non-technical person, from outside the US, who reads, writes and speaks English fluently, lives in NYC with his American wife and has an above average income because of the wildly popular television show on HBO that he hosts. John Oliver is hardly representative of the other billions of non-technical people from outside of the US.

  > Yeah - This carries some weight.

A February poll by Reuters has 46% of Americans supporting Apple, the number jumped to 64% for people 18-39 years of age and a more recent WSJ/NBC poll of registered voters puts the number at 47%. What percentage of John Oliver's audience do you think changed their opinion after seeing the show and now support Apple? Or do you consider comedic reinforcement of a previously held belief is "carrying some weight"?

The host is British, but Last Week Tonight is an American television show.

I hope so. It has worldwide implications. There would be negative impacts for their business(es) globally if they nerf encryption.

If it can be shown that it will eat into profits of US companies (because people will switch en masse to non-US providers, e.g. telegram in Brasil) then it's a pretty big difference non-technical people from outside the US can make.

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